Calling all backyard farmers! We're looking at humankind's first alarm clock: the moa, or red junglefowl. Common chickens were likely domesticated from red junglefowl in Asia over 8,000 years ago. We've got both here in Hawaiʻi! Listen to the difference in their crows, thanks to Macaulay Library at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, on today's Manu Minute.
A Hawaii Home Built to Withstand a Hurricane Captures House of the Year Title A Hawaii Home Built to Withstand a Hurricane Captures House of the Year Title
Voters of WSJ.com s 2020 competition cast more than 293,000 ballots, with this oceanfront property on Kauai s southern coast coming out on top
published : 4 Feb 2021 at 04:00
34 The property sits on 0.75 acres and has roughly 500 feet of ocean frontage. (Photo: KRISTIN HOSHINO FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL)
What is it about Hawaii that keeps House of the Year voters coming back for more?
For the third consecutive year, a home from the Aloha state landed atop WSJ.com s annual House of the Year contest. Readers chose the winner from our 52 House of the Week victors, with a total of 293,180 votes cast.
Mark Oyama of Mark s Place and Contemporary Flavors Catering on Kaua i
Recovering from Hurricanes Iwa in 1982, and Iniki in 1992, is still pretty fresh for a lot of Kauai people. More recently, there was the ‘08-‘09 recession, but by last year, 2019, Chef Mark Oyama, of Mark’s Place in Lihu’e, says the economy was pumping again.
Restaurants actually suffer when it s really good, because we can t get employees. It s hard to get workers at that time.”
Oyama also runs Kaua’i’s largest catering company, Contemporary Flavors, and had a staff of more than fifty.
“We had a lot of business, catering was booming. I do a lot of destination weddings so there s nothing now. If we did have a full service event where we service it, we end up making like plate lunches there. We gotta repack it and serve it because you can t do a buffet anymore.
Standing about seven inches tall, Kauaˊi ˊōˊō had a rich black and brown plumage with bright yellow tufts of feathers above their legs. Their bills were black, a bit more than one inch long, and slightly curved downwards to fit into the corolla of a variety of flowers.
Credit Robert Shallenberger
Special thanks to the Macaulay Library at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology for use of their recordings in today s Manu Minute.
The Kauaˊi ˊōˊō was once commonplace. Its melodic call of
oo-oo, for which it is named, could be heard throughout the subtropical forests of the Garden Isle into the early twentieth century. But by the 1980s, only a single pair of Kauaˊi ˊōˊō remained. The male, who likely lost his mate during Hurricane Iwa in 1983, was last recorded in 1987. His solitary song was not only the final call of his species, but also of an entire lineage of birds unique to the Hawaiian islands.